‘Climate breakdown has begun’: Earth’s latest dark record

‘Climate breakdown has begun’: Earth’s latest dark record
Earth has sweltered by way of its hottest Northern Hemisphere summer season ever measured, with a document heat August capping a season of brutal and lethal temperatures, in keeping with the World Meteorological Organisation.
Last month was not solely the most well liked August scientists ever recorded by far with trendy gear, it was additionally the second hottest month measured, behind solely July 2023, WMO and the European local weather service Copernicus introduced Wednesday.

August was about 1.5 levels hotter than pre-industrial averages. That is the edge that the world is attempting to not move, although scientists are extra involved about rises in temperatures over a long time, not merely a blip over a month’s time.

A bike owner tops a hill on a sizzling day at sundown, August 20, 2023, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)

The world’s oceans — greater than 70 per cent of the Earth’s floor — had been the most well liked ever recorded, almost 21 levels, and have set excessive temperature marks for 3 consecutive months, the WMO and Copernicus stated.

“The dog days of summer are not just barking, they are biting,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated in a press release.

“Climate breakdown has begun.”

So far, 2023 is the second hottest yr on document, behind 2016, in keeping with Copernicus.

Scientists blame human-caused local weather change from the burning of coal, oil and pure gasoline with an additional push from a pure El Nino, which is a short lived warming of components of the Pacific Ocean that adjustments climate worldwide. Usually an El Nino, which began earlier this yr, provides additional warmth to world temperatures however extra so in its second yr.

Climatologist Andrew Weaver stated the numbers introduced by WMO and Copernicus come as no shock, bemoaning how governments haven’t appeared to take the difficulty of world warming severely sufficient. He expressed concern that the general public will simply neglect the difficulty when temperatures fall once more.

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“It’s time for global leaders to start telling the truth,” stated Weaver, a professor on the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences on the University of Victoria in Canada.

“We will not limit warming to 1.5C; we will not limit warming to 2.0C. It’s all hands on deck now to prevent 3.0C global warming — a level of warming that will wreak havoc worldwide.”

Copernicus, a division of the European Union’s area program, has data going again to 1940, however within the United Kingdom and the United States, world data return to the mid 1800s and people climate and science businesses are anticipated to quickly report that the summer season was a record-breaker.

“What we are observing, not only new extremes but the persistence of these record-breaking conditions, and the impacts these have on both people and planet, are a clear consequence of the warming of the climate system,” Copernicus Climate Change Service director Carlo Buontempo stated.

Israelis and Palestinians bathe in a cool pure spring within the Judean Desert, West Bank, August 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg, File)

Scientists have used tree rings, ice cores and different proxies to estimate that temperatures at the moment are hotter than they’ve been in about 120,000 years. The world has been hotter earlier than, however that was previous to human civilisation, seas had been a lot larger and the poles weren’t icy.

So far, each day September temperatures are larger than what has been recorded earlier than for this time of yr, in keeping with the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyser.

While the world’s air and oceans had been setting data for warmth, Antarctica continued to set data for low quantities of sea ice, the WMO stated.

“Antarctic sea ice extent was literally off the charts, and the global sea surface temperature was once again at a new record,” WMO’s secretary-general, Petteri Taalas, stated in a press release launched to the media.

A World Youth Day volunteer makes use of a small fan to chill off from the extreme warmth, as he waits forward of the Pope Francis arrival at Passeio Marítimo in Algés, simply outdoors Lisbon, August 6, 2023. (AP Photo/Armando Franca, File)

“It is worth noting that this is happening BEFORE we see the full warming impact of the El Nino event, which typically plays out in the second year after it develops.”

A robust El Nino coincided with the all-time excessive temperatures in 2016. The UN climate company earlier this yr rolled out predictions that counsel Earth would inside the subsequent 5 years have a yr that averages 1.5 levels hotter than within the mid nineteenth century. Each yr at or close to 1.5 issues.

It additionally predicted 98 per cent likelihood of breaking the 2016 document between now and 2027.

The new readings on excessive world temperatures got here as WMO launched Wednesday its newest bulletin on air high quality and local weather, noting that excessive warmth, compounded by wildfires and desert mud, has had a measurable affect on air high quality, human well being and the atmosphere.

A person cools off at a short lived misting station deployed by the town within the Downtown Eastside resulting from a warmth wave, in Vancouver, British Columbia, August 16, 2023. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press through AP, File)

WMO scientific adviser Lorenzo Labrador lamented the deteriorating air high quality across the globe and cited “record-breaking wildfire season” in lots of components of the world, together with western Canada and Europe.

“If heat waves increase as a result of El Nino, we may probably expect a further degradation in air quality as a whole,” he stated.

Source: www.9news.com.au